The Pearl of France

by Caroline Newark

  I nodded dumbly. He turned his back and began talking to Louis. I sat numb with pain, bewildered by his lightening changes of mood. One moment he was as tender as springtime, the next he was in a fury. I would have to pray for patience and keep a watch on my tongue and remember he was my master in all things.

  I did not dare question my stepson further about his sisters in case my husband overheard. Instead I spent the rest of the morning staring at the competitors and trying to enjoy myself. This was a very splendid occasion and a celebration for my marriage. So why did I feel miserable?

  The day dragged on with one exhausting event after the other. I changed my gown twice in order to appear an ornament to my husband’s position and by the time the last song was sung and the minstrels finally laid aside their instruments, my feet were sore and my back ached. I had spoken with so many people, I could not remember one from the other and the smile on my face felt as though it was fixed on by nails. All I wanted was to be alone with my husband.

  I was weary and only too glad to be dressed by my women ready for the night. My two young penitents were red-eyed and silent as they went about their duties and I noticed there was a more respectful attitude towards me by all the younger women. The same ritual was followed as the night before and after my women had followed me into the bedchamber and I’d said my prayers they put me between the sheets and scuttled out. My husband came in with just one attendant. I wondered if he would wish to sit and talk as we had the previous night or if he was as impatient as I was to close the curtains. Despite myself I could not help but feel a pleasurable shiver of anticipation for the feel of his long hard body on mine.

  ‘I am tired,’ he said crossly, handing his robe to his valet and clambering up the steps into the bed.

  The curtains were drawn and we lay in silence. After a little while he sighed deeply and turned on his side. In the gloom I could see lines of tiredness on his face and my heart filled with pity for him. I knew the coldness he had shown earlier today was my fault and I was determined to do better.

  ‘Duty before pleasure,’ he said wearily. ‘I desire sleep like a starving man desires a crust of bread but the needs of kingship come first. Open your legs, my lady.’

  Then without more ado he drew up my nightgown and hoisted himself on top of me. He was impatient and it hurt but when I cried out and tried to twist away he pinned me closer to the bed and covered my mouth with his.

  ‘Pray for a son, wife,’ he said as he rolled off me.

  A few moments later he was fast asleep. I lay there, stunned by the roughness of his handling. This man, who the night before had professed to want a willing bed partner, tonight had not seemed to care if I was willing or not.

  Tears seeped from under my closed eyelids as I lay weeping in silence. After a while I realised I was feeling sorry for myself which was a sin. My thoughts and concerns should be for my husband for my duty was to please him. My feelings were unimportant. I whispered in the dark to Our Blessed Lady to help me do better.

  Next morning I woke bleary-eyed and heavy-hearted. My husband had risen early leaving me to sleep. I knew that he had matters of business to attend to each day and would spend time before Mass closeted with his councillors. This was a world which did not touch me. My mother had made it clear that wives should not meddle. Husbands did not like it. I thought of Philip’s injunctions for me to influence my husband for the advantage of my French family and realised how impossible this would be. But I was determined to be pleasant to all the elderly men who occupied our pavilion however tedious they might be and I would be brave and talk with some of the wives and daughters.

  I found the earl of Surrey waiting for my husband.

  ‘My Lord Surrey,’ I said, speaking clearly for I’d been told the elderly John de Warrene was somewhat deaf. ‘I have a question to ask which I’ve been told only you can answer.’

  He preened himself as men do when made to feel important.

  ‘My lady, I will do my best. What is it you wish to know?’

  ‘Scotland,’ I said. ‘I do not understand. They say my husband will go campaigning there. But why? I understood he had brought peace. I know they don’t have a king any more and that my husband has their great seal. So why would he need to campaign there?’

  He regarded me with interest, clearly deliberating how much I needed to know about what was essentially men’s business.

  ‘If you read The History of the Kings of Britain you will see the book is quite clear on the matter and the lawyers agree. Scotland is an inferior country, merely a limb of the body, subservient to England.’

  ‘So the Scots are my husband’s vassals?’

  ‘Yes, but John Balliol, their king, didn’t behave as a vassal ought. Made an alliance with your brother. We had no alternative but to march in.’

  ‘I am sorry, my Lord Surrey, but was it not an aggression to march in?’

  ‘Aggression? Never! His grace was entirely within his rights. If your vassal don’t behave, you teach him a lesson. And what a lesson it was! Balliol packed off to the Tower and his grace made plain to the others what would happen.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  He bellowed with laughter. ‘No more king of the Scots! We carried off their sacred stone from the abbey at Scone. That showed them we meant business. We took their keys and demanded fealty. We left our men in their halls to see they obeyed and his grace did me the honour of putting the great seal of Scotland in my hands. Said it was a good day’s business for him, getting rid of a turd!’

  ‘If peace was restored then why is his grace campaigning?’ This was becoming more and more muddling.

  ‘Ah, my lady, there’s always a Scotsman who don’t know when he’s beat. First that young fool Bruce, the lord of Annadale’s son, and that sly bishop, Wishart. Then that brigand Wallace pops up from nowhere. Slaughtered my men at Stirling. Corpses everywhere! I shan’t tell you what he did to my treasurer, Cressingham. The man was dead, but it was a heathen act.’ A single tear ran down the earl’s cheek and disappeared into his whiskery beard. ‘You women have no idea what war is like.’

  He was clearly distressed and I wished I hadn’t asked. I tried not to think what might have happened to Messire Cressingham.

  ‘Got the better of them the next season. Routed them at Falkirk, chased them across the country. Took Bruce’s castles but the crafty bugger slipped the net. We’ll get him though, never you fear, and we’ll get that churl, Wallace too. Skulking round Paris, I hear, paying court to your brother. I hope I live long enough to see him hang in chains.’

  I didn’t wish to be drawn into discussions about my brother’s perfidy and his support for these disobedient Scots so I thanked the earl and wished him good luck for the joust. I was concerned because my marriage was meant to create good relations between our two countries but it seemed that my brother was proving deceitful. I hoped my husband wouldn’t blame me for my brother’s sins. If Philip consorted with my husband’s enemies it would be impossible to help my family.

  I turned to find Ned slouching on a cushion looking downcast. ‘Is something the matter?’ I enquired.

  ‘I have offended his grace, my father, again. That’s the third time this week.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He laughed ruefully. ‘Not unless you can change his opinion of me. It seems I choose the wrong company.’

  He scuffed his boots in the dust of the platform and stuck out his bottom lip. He reminded me of Blanche. How ridiculous for a young English lord to remind me of my sister but they both had the same rebellious look when they failed to get their own way.

  ‘What do you do which so displeases his grace?’

  ‘He doesn’t like my friends. He says they’re low-born and I spend too much time being idle and amusing myself. He says being king is a serious business. But I like my friends and don’t see why he shoul
d dictate what I do.’

  Poor boy, I thought.

  ‘Does his grace not order your household?’

  ‘Oh yes, he decides who will be appointed. I like many of them but I have other friends and he doesn’t approve of them at all, says they are unsuitable. He wants me to be more like Cousin Thomas. And now he’s threatening to cut off my income.’

  I knew I was on difficult ground. I wanted to be kind to Ned for he was a pleasant boy and my stepson, part of my new family, but I was fearful of angering my husband who clearly had an awkward relationship with Ned as well as with his daughters.

  ‘Earl Thomas seems pleasant.’ Truthfully I knew nothing of the Lancaster brothers but certainly Lord Henry had seemed friendly.

  ‘Thomas would like to be ruler of all England,’ Ned said bluntly, ‘not just his own domains.’

  I drew a sharp breath. This was close to treason.

  ‘I trust he doesn’t say such things aloud.’

  ‘No, but he thinks them. When we were younger he said he’d never bend his knee to me because I was a fool.’

  ‘He didn’t mean it. Boys often say silly things in the heat of a quarrel.’

  ‘He was no child when he said it and he meant every word.’

  I felt a frisson of fear and remembered hearing someone talk of the goose which walks over your grave in time of danger. I touched the back of my neck and whispered a silent prayer.

  3

  Autumn 1299

  A few days later we left Canterbury to journey to a place called the Island of Thorns where we would stay before my husband and I set off on a progress to the north. To facilitate his campaigning in Scotland my husband had moved his officials to the city of York in the northern part of his realm. My heart sank at the thought. My women said the people there had tails beneath their tunics and spoke in a foreign tongue. I didn’t believe them but the thought was very frightening.

  Now the marriage celebrations were over I knew my life would be different. My husband and I would no longer share the same rooms. I would have my own household and my own apartments and my husband would visit me whenever he had a mind. This, I had been assured by my mother, was usual. Husbands and wives never shared apartments and royal women led separate lives. If a man found his wife pleasing he would seek her out during the day but if she was not to his liking he merely used her each night until she conceived a child. Then he would not visit her again until after the child was born and she was once more ready to receive his attentions.

  Today would be the last day we would be together and it was clear to me that, as far as my husband was concerned, I had only one purpose - to bear him a son. There was to be no loving companionship or happy family life, no role as a helpmeet or confidante. I was not to be his intimate friend, merely a vessel for the carrying of another child.

  I wanted to weep in my disappointment, for I knew I had failed. He had been forced to marry me and now that he had met me, he was no longer interested. My role was to carry a son, nothing more. I wished I was beautiful and accomplished, then perhaps he would want me with him. But what man would want a small plain insignificant young woman like me?

  I had again fallen into the sin of self-pity.

  The news that I was to have men in my household who had previously served my husband’s first wife distressed me greatly. Of course I was being foolish. If I had bothered to raise my nose out of the trough of misery into which I had fallen, it would have been obvious. Of course I needed experienced people to help me and what better men could there be than those who had served the last queen. What seemed like a slap across my face was in fact a kindness, but it took me a long time to realise the care my husband had taken in making these arrangements.

  He also appointed several English women to my chamber, women I didn’t know and thought I might not like but I remembered my mother’s words and tried to bear this burden with good grace.

  As we rode out of the city, dressed in our regal finery, the crowds cheered calling out names I couldn’t understand. I tried hard but in the end was defeated.

  ‘What do they say, my lord?’ I asked, tentatively tying to make some conversation.

  He laughed, in high good humour now the merrymaking was over and he could get back to the life he’d had before I interrupted it.

  ‘They are calling you a French pearl, a treasure. It seems they have decided to like you.’

  I blushed, touched by the unexpected compliment. He rarely spoke to me and never with terms of endearment and I was becoming used to his rather brusque manner. I tried not to mind but my dreams of how we would be were fading fast in the face of the bleak, loveless reality of my marriage.

  It was pleasant to be out of the stuffy rooms and on the road again in the clear morning air of early autumn. If it hadn’t been for my feelings of failure I might have enjoyed the journey.

  ‘Will you like being a French pearl?’ my husband asked as we passed round a small copse of trees and out of sight of the walls of Canterbury.

  ‘If it pleases you, my lord, I shall like it very much.’

  ‘Oh yes, it pleases me,’ he said. ‘Eleanor was inordinately fond of pearls and I think the name suits you, my little French pearl.’

  With that he threw his head back and laughed.

  His humour had been better these past few days, but the nights were difficult for me. He was more considerate than he’d been that second night but he still didn’t speak to me other than to order my compliance in our bed. Just once he stroked my cheek, running his fingers gently over my warm skin, and one early morning, with the cobwebs of sleep still in his eyes, he woke and gathered me to him in a wordless embrace. But every time I thought I was beginning to know him, he would retreat into a mood of indifference. He was unlike any man I had ever met and I was nervous of his moods and his temper. I was also very careful not to talk of his children as that seemed to be a subject which caused him particular annoyance. And I never mentioned his first wife.

  I discovered later that on the day we left Canterbury he had issued a call for a mustering of troops at York in eight weeks time. This was to be the start of the next campaign against the Scots.

  ‘I shall be leaving you, my lady,’ he said formally. ‘I must do battle again. This time, God willing, I shall conquer the Scots for good.’

  ‘But it will be winter,’ I cried in dismay. ‘Surely, my lord, you cannot fight in the snow?’

  My women said Scotland was known to be a harsh and barren land where snow fell from Michaelmas through to midsummer and beyond.

  He laughed, brushing aside my concerns.

  ‘I conquered the Welsh in the snow. Did you not know that, my lady? I shall do the same to the Scots. My army will chase them from the walls of Stirling and show them who is master. They are mistaken if they think I shall stand for their petty rebellions. Their so-called king is safely in the hands of His Holiness and now they are leaderless they will submit to me. With the army I plan to take this winter we shall defeat them and by next spring, all Scotland will be ours again.’

  He looked at me seriously. ‘I trust, my lady, that by the time I leave you at York, you will be carrying my child.’

  ‘I trust so too, my lord,’ I said. ‘I pray every night for a son.’

  Three days later we approached the Island of Thorns over a narrow wooden bridge spanning a muddy little stream.

  ‘The Tyburn,’ said my husband carelessly as we clattered across the planks. ‘The Confessor chose this site to build his church, though, God’s bones, I could have chosen many a better one. It is convenient for the river crossing and not far from the city but the ground is marshy.’

  The Confessor was the English king made saint who ruled this land before the Conqueror snatched the crown. I knew all about him and his great piety as he was well remembered. My grandmother had told me he was so saintly he refused to lie with his w
ife, denying himself the pleasures of the flesh. “I wonder what his queen thought of that?” she had whispered in my ear. I missed my grandmother as I missed my mother and my sister and my home.

  ‘And that,’ said my husband, indicating the magnificent church ahead of us, ‘is where my father chose to empty his treasury. The abbey church of Saint Peter. He spent most of his life and most of the Crown’s money rebuilding it.’

  ‘Is the Confessor buried there?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. In the most beautiful shrine you have ever seen. It glitters like the morning sun.’

  I looked at this church which my father-in-law, whom I would never know, had built.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

  It was indeed. With its soaring walls, its arches, its great north window and its flying buttresses, it was a marvel, equal to anything I had seen at home. But it was not the only building on the island. Apart from the cluster of little thatched cottages by the bridge, there were two large halls built closer to the river and what looked like a palace which was yet unfinished.

  Beyond the great abbey church were buildings where the community of brothers lived and worked and behind those the abbey gardens, neatly laid out and surrounded by high stone walls. There was also a tiny church hiding in the shadow of the abbey.

  ‘What is that?’ I enquired, pointing at the humble little building.

  ‘The church of Saint Margaret,’ replied my husband shortly. ‘The workmen pray there.’

  ‘I like it,’ I said, smiling. ‘It is my saint’s name.’

  My husband looked up in surprise.

  ‘So it is. I had not thought.’

  We rode towards the half-finished palace where dozens of men covered in mud and dust were hoisting great blocks of pale stone onto walls which were already dizzyingly high. Some parts of this maze of buildings seemed to be perfect, with cloisters and a galleried hall complete with great arched windows, but elsewhere I could see walls no higher than a man’s knee and charred timbers, scorched stones and shattered tiles lying around in filthy heaps.